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Patent war goes nuclear: Microsoft, Apple-owned “Rockstar” sues Google

arstechnica.com

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Re: Patent war goes nuclear: Microsoft, Apple-owned “Rockstar” sues Google

#321

Post by erikb »

pg wrote: post #61

It's a little early to say for sure, but I predict this will do more to hurt Apple's reputation in the tech community than anything they've done before. And that is not a good community to alienate. I would not be surprised if they look back on this move one day and feel that they ended up net worse off as a result. Apple used to be careful not to alienate hackers. And Microsoft has been gradually digging itself out…

Interesting that people can have such a different view on the same information. Since the first iPhone came on the market I always read articles that Apple would be alienating the hacker community. It also makes sense because they are mostly bought by hipsters who don't know as much about tech as they want to make others believe. I have no experience with Apple products, though. Therefore my information might be completely wrong.

Re: Patent war goes nuclear: Microsoft, Apple-owned “Rockstar” sues Google

#322

Post by dreen »

zurn wrote: post #192
x0x0 wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but say I want a smartphone, what is my alternative? google, who works harder and harder to sell everything I do to advertisers (now you can't even rate apps w/o a google+ account), and who just shut off transmitting search data so they can screw site owners for more $? microsoft, who is a party to this and actively worked to make the internet worse (and succeeded!) for the better part of a decade? or apple, who at l…

Firefox OS and Jolla. Firefox OS + ZTE Open: cheap and good battery life (70€ / $80, 2-7 days).

I would buy Jolla right away if it had a hw keyboard. There may be a FOS device worth buying but I havent seen one yet. I am way overdue for a replacement, and sadly, I need to agree with your parent - there is nothing interesting on the market at the moment.

Re: Patent war goes nuclear: Microsoft, Apple-owned “Rockstar” sues Google

#324

Post by ZeroGravitas »

bowlofpetunias wrote: post #224
pg wrote: post #61

It's a little early to say for sure, but I predict this will do more to hurt Apple's reputation in the tech community than anything they've done before. And that is not a good community to alienate. I would not be surprised if they look back on this move one day and feel that they ended up net worse off as a result. Apple used to be careful not to alienate hackers. And Microsoft has been gradually digging itself out…

This may be true, but let's not get fooled into thinking that because "they" are the enemy, Google must be our friend. Google is playing a very dubious game here, and it has nothing to do with being on "our" side of the patent issue. They've tried to buy the same patents, refused to participate in a joint effort to safeguard those patents for all, and then knowingly violated those patents. All through this, they've b…

By "refused to participate in a joint effort to safeguard those patents for all", do you mean that Microsoft offered to buy these patents jointly with Google, in such a way that Microsoft would be able to use them to extort Android manufacturers and Google wouldn't be able to use the patents to help defend them?

Because if so that's some pretty heavy spin you're putting on it.

edit: excerpt from Google's official response, linked elsewhere in this thread (note it was in reference to a different bundle of patents).

" If you think about it, it's obvious why we turned down Microsoft’s offer. Microsoft's objective has been to keep from Google and Android device-makers any patents that might be used to defend against their attacks. A joint acquisition of the Novell patents that gave all parties a license would have eliminated any protection these patents could offer to Android against attacks from Microsoft and its bidding partners. Making sure that we would be unable to assert these patents to defend Android — and having us pay for the privilege — must have seemed like an ingenious strategy to them. We didn't fall for it.

Ultimately, the U.S. Department of Justice intervened, forcing Microsoft to sell the patents it bought and demanding that the winning group (Microsoft, Oracle, Apple, EMC) give a license to the open-source community, changes the DoJ said were “necessary to protect competition and innovation in the open source software community.” This only reaffirms our point: Our competitors are waging a patent war on Android and working together to keep us from getting patents that would help balance the scales."

Re: Patent war goes nuclear: Microsoft, Apple-owned “Rockstar” sues Google

#325

Post by ZeroGravitas »

buro9 wrote: post #213
partyanimal wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The Rockstar consortium is an organization backed by Apple, Microsoft, BlackBerry, Ericsson and Sony."

Not all members are equal parties and it's not hard to feel that the leaders in this group are Microsoft and Apple. They have the means, the motivation, and both have track record. Blackberry are in no place to do this, Ericsson haven't been of this nature, and whilst Sony could they have enough distraction going on at the moment to focus their attention elsewhere. I also feel those three would gleefully follow Apple…

Sony (and Nokia) have been patent trolling under the name MobileMedia for a while:

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/12/jury-finds-iphone...

The CEO of the firm they set up to do the trolling is also the CEO of MPEG-LA that collects patent fees for H.264 and a few other royalty bearing standards.

Re: Patent war goes nuclear: Microsoft, Apple-owned “Rockstar” sues Google

#327

Post by MaysonL »

blumkvist wrote: post #277
air wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think separating good guys and bad guys is pretty simple, if one is against (at least software) patents: Using patents aggressively makes you a bad guy. Google has not done this, Microsoft and Apple have.

This is according to some moral code or what? The world doesn't abide a set of moral rules. Rules are made by people who can't win without them. You can't tell everybody to stick it and start entering several industries at once. In the real world you have to be cooperative, as well as persistent, because you are not the only 800-pound gorilla.

No,rules are made by people who can enforce them.

Re: Patent war goes nuclear: Microsoft, Apple-owned “Rockstar” sues Google

#328

Post by abraxasz »

bowlofpetunias wrote: post #224
pg wrote: post #61

It's a little early to say for sure, but I predict this will do more to hurt Apple's reputation in the tech community than anything they've done before. And that is not a good community to alienate. I would not be surprised if they look back on this move one day and feel that they ended up net worse off as a result. Apple used to be careful not to alienate hackers. And Microsoft has been gradually digging itself out…

This may be true, but let's not get fooled into thinking that because "they" are the enemy, Google must be our friend. Google is playing a very dubious game here, and it has nothing to do with being on "our" side of the patent issue. They've tried to buy the same patents, refused to participate in a joint effort to safeguard those patents for all, and then knowingly violated those patents. All through this, they've b…

Completely agree with you, that's why I think this whole mess is wonderful news. I like the nuclear war analogy here, and I hope that both sides will hurt each other so bad in this little game that at the end they'll sit down somewhere and say: "never again". Then they'll start doing what all of us expect the Tech Giants to do: start pouring money on patent laws policies to put trolls out of business. It will have taken a lot of wasted money and harm to each of them to reach that point, but better late than never, eh.

Re: Patent war goes nuclear: Microsoft, Apple-owned “Rockstar” sues Google

#329

Post by mkjack »

lambdasquirrel wrote: post #140
cromwellian wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How dare they! And how dare Linus Torvalds "dump" Linux on the industry, or Mozilla "dump" Firefox. They should be required by law to charge high fees!

I wouldn't rush to that analogy. Microsoft dumped IE and we mostly agree that that was kind of dirty. From another angle, Google is trying to leverage one monopoly in order to break into another, and they did it by poorly copying the iPhone. There aren't really any "good guys" in this picture, but I at least give Microsoft a nod for trying (and failing) to do something different.

Microsoft didn't get in trouble for "dumping" IE. They got in trouble for trying to make IE an integral component of Windows which would have made other browsers unusable or unnecessarily cumbersome to use.

Re: Patent war goes nuclear: Microsoft, Apple-owned “Rockstar” sues Google

#330

Post by mkjack »

mythz wrote: post #154
yamamoto wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> hurt Apple's reputation in the tech community than anything they've done before They're not the ones suing Google. Rockstar's a separate entity with its own corp leadership that has incentives to find ways to recoup their investment. >Apple used to be careful not to alienate hackers. Google and their monopolistic practices and their anti-competition ploys is what has alienated more hackers than Apple ever will. >No…

> They're not the ones suing Google. Rockstar's a separate entity.. You must be new here to not know the scammy tactics Patent trolls use to hide behind and operate within. But judging from your newly created account, I'm going with just another standard shill.

> and their monopolistic practices... Is there any of the big hitters in the industry that aren't similarly "monopolistic"?

Agreed. This guy's a shill.

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